Beast Tamer Era: Capturing SSS-ranks with the Strongest Taming System-Chapter 116: Flying Serpents

The gigantic skeletal hand tried to crush Ray in its grasp with brute force.

Ray gritted his teeth and resisted fiercely.

"Unhand me!"

With him at the center, a violent storm burst out. A storm made of incredibly sharp azure winds and high temperature flames intertwining into a spiral of annihilation.

The gigantic skeletal hand gripping Ray was torn to shreds instantly, and the fragments it was reduced to were burned so intensely that they turned to ashes in mere moments.

Ray redirected the same red-and-green storm toward the other skeletal arms in his surroundings.

One by one, they were obliterated, reduced to nothing but drifting piles of bone dust that scattered across the swamp bed, carried away by the howling wind.

Whoosh!

Just as he finished dealing with the gigantic skeletal arms, a shockwave of pure kinetic force ripped through the air with a resounding boom, racing straight toward his back with terrifying speed.

Ray had sensed it coming and had already prepared a countermeasure.

He turned around and thrust both hands forward.

Death Beam!

A colossal azure beam erupted from his palms, colliding with the Mad Chieftain’s strike attack.

What transpired next was nothing short of catastrophic.

Boom!

A resounding explosion erupted from their attacks colliding, flattening everything within a hundred feet, leveling what little remained of the Yanran ruins. Trees were uprooted, swamp water vaporized, and many building-like structures were reduced to dust.

When the dust finally settled, Ray was revealed to be unharmed, standing tall and strong.

He had activated his Fortification Skill, metallifying every fiber of his body to withstand the explosion’s destructive force. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The Mad Chieftain, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as fortunate.

The skull trophies that once adorned his horns were shattered beyond repair. His horns had suffered the same fate. Further, chunks of his flesh had gone missing in the explosion, exposing bone, and his left arm was gone entirely.

The outcome made it painfully clear who had come out on top in that exchange.

But Ray didn’t celebrate.

After all, it wasn’t a victory worth celebrating. The battle was far from over as made evident by what happened next.

His wounds closed rapidly, and like a miracle, a new limb grew to replace the one he had lost in the clash. If it were anyone else in the Mad Chieftain’s place, they would’ve already met their end from the pain and the blood loss and all, but the Mad Chieftain’s innate power refused to let him die despite the damage he’d received. Within mere heartbeats, he was back to looking as unscathed as when the battle began.

"What ridiculous regeneration..." Ray cursed under his breath, eyes narrowing.

"Why are you still not dead!?" the Mad Chieftain bellowed, glaring at Ray with unrestrained fury.

Ray had made him suffer losses he had never experienced before.

The pain of losing a limb, the agony of rebuilding it, and the insult of being toyed with by a mere human. All of it mixed together into one overwhelming emotion that radiated from him like a storm. Murderous rage made the suffocating environment of the murky swamp region even more unbearable.

"Unique Technique: Death God Descent!"

The Mad Chieftain raised his warhammer, screaming incoherently. He aged rapidly as his tattoos ignited. Half in blinding crimson, half in ghostly white light. Their glow so intense it illuminated the ruins like daybreak. Intense power surged into his Warhammer as he brought it down to strike the ground.

It was clear he had sacrificed his lifespan to do something dangerous.

Whatever he had prepared would be devastating, but Ray had no intention of finding out what it was.

"It’s here," Ray murmured, his eyes flashing sharply.

The chance he had been waiting for had finally come!

He immediately used Lightning Step.

He had refrained from using it until now for two reasons.

Firstly, it consumed too much stamina.

He could only use it a handful of times before exhausting himself, and even though he had Fairy Trixie as his companion and she could help him restore his stamina, he didn’t dare to use it casually.

Secondly, he had deliberately concealed this ability to catch the Mad Chieftain off guard when the perfect opportunity arose.

Now, that moment had come. So he used it without hesitation.

"W–What!?" the Mad Chieftain roared in shock as Ray suddenly vanished from sight.

Before he could even comprehend what had happened, Ray reappeared right before him, his hand reaching toward the Chieftain’s chest.

"You can teleport!?" the Mad Chieftain shouted, but that crucial realization came far too late.

Ray’s hand had already landed on his chest.

It was a simple pat. It made the Mad Chieftain think it could do no real harm, but when it connected, a terrifying torrent of force transmitted over.

BOOM!

His chest burst open, and his heart exploded.

The Consecutive Lucky Shot trait could turn even the gentlest of touches into a weapon of destruction, as long as Ray willed it.

It allowed him to completely fool the Mad Chieftain and end his life, but the chieftain’s innate power was forcefully bringing him back by burning through whatever magic power remained in his body.

"What a beast," Ray muttered, watching as the Mad Chieftain’s heart began regenerating from fragments.

Although the Mad Chieftain had fallen still after having his heart destroyed, Ray didn’t doubt that he would regain consciousness and mobility once his heart was fully restored, and if that happened, if he managed to bring his warhammer down to touch the ground, who knew what disaster might follow.

Luckily, Ray had him exactly where he wanted him. The Mad Chieftain was in a severely compromised position where he couldn’t defend himself from attacks, and Ray had many attacks that could kill someone like him ten times over.

One just need to destroy his head to actually kill him.

But the Mad Chieftain’s head was heavily reinforced with defensive rune. It was very difficult to destroy it with conventional means.

But Ray had a solution.

He opened his mouth and spewed out a few mouthfuls of Level 2 Flames, the temperatures of which exceeded 2,000°C. His magic power dropped to zero.

The Mad Chieftain’s head couldn’t easily be damaged due to all.the runes protecting it, but flames with temperatures exceeding 2,000°C were more than enough to do the job.

The flames engulfed the chieftain’s head, melting it away like candle wax until nothing remained of it.

The head was where the magic power storage of most races was located.

With the mad chieftain’s head destroyed, his magic power storage was also obliterated.

Without any magic power left to sustain the function of his innate ability, the Mad Chieftain’s life finally came to an end. His headless body lay still and lifeless, a far cry from the fearsome warrior he had once been.

♦️ You have killed the Mad Chieftain of the Targodyles — a Peak Bronze Rank Runic Warrior. You have gained +100,000 EXP.

♦️ You have gained +50,000 additional EXP for killing a being one major and three minor realms above you.

The true reward for killing him was the Warhammer as well as his corpse.

Ray looted both of them, storing them in his inventory.

The corpse could be studied to deepen his understanding of runes. The Warhammer was made of some kind of special material as it wasn’t damaged despite how brutally they had fought, and it could react to the power of runes. It had to be something special!

******

Inside the outer region of the Misty Swamp Region, in the depths of a labyrinthine cave system, shadows broke free from the ground, converging into the shape of a man.

The man was seven feet tall, with two sharp fangs jutting from his mouth.

"Jinvah’s dead," he reported flatly.

"What?" A massive serpent’s head emerged from the black pond in the middle of the cavernous space, water cascading down its gleaming scales. "I just met him last week. He didn’t seem like the kind to drop dead anytime soon. There was no shadow of death surrounding him. What killed him?"

"I am equally clueless," replied the shadow man.

"But you’re better at reading fates than me!" the serpent hissed. "If even you can’t divine who was responsible—"

The shadow man finished his sentence coldly. "Then it’s either someone far stronger than us... or a Fateless."

The serpent’s pupils narrowed into vertical slits.

After a moment it said, "Whatever the case, it isn’t good news for me, is it?"

The shadow man nodded before giving his reasons. "The Yanran Ruins aren’t far from here. If the culprit’s goal is to kill the Three Great Terrors, then you’re next on the list. I came to tell you to be careful."

"Thanks for the warning. You can leave."

The shadow man bowed before his form unraveled, dissolving into ribbons of darkness that sank back into the cave floor. The oppressive weight in the cavern eased slightly, leaving only the serpent behind.

The serpent’s golden eyes glowed faintly in the gloom. "I don’t know who you are," it muttered, its voice dripping with hatred, "but you won’t live long after crossing us."